Sergio Ramos Ready To Shackle Lionel Messi

Real Madrid coach Bernd Schuster will be forced to shuffle his back-line for Saturday’s critical El Clasico clash, but it appears that he has found a solution for the problem known as Lionel Messi.

Real Madrid will head into Saturday’s showdown with bitter rivals,Barcelona without at least half of their first team.

With injured players littered across every position and department on the pitch, Madrid’s most vital absence, however, will be in the left-back slot: the flank Lionel Messi will attack from.

Marcelo is suspended and Miguel Torres is out injured, while at this stage Gabriel Heinze appears to be doubtful. And even if he does recover from a muscle ailment in time, he will be short on match fitness: a defect that can be brutally fatal against a player like ‘Little Lionel’.

Madrid-based daily AS has speculated that coach Bernd Schuster will turn to the versatile Sergio Ramos in an attempt to put the brakes on the mercurial Messi. With Pepe also sidelined, Christoph Metzelder will most likely partner Fabio Cannavaro in the centre of defence, but this will leave the right-back position up in the air.
While Ramos may look like the perfect solution to stop Messi, the bad omen for Madridistas is that the only two occasions where he has been employed as a left-back since joining Los Blancos occurred back in 2007 under Fabio Capello, against Deportivo La Coruna and Real Valladolid. Madrid lost both matches.

The possible absences of midfielders Wesley Sneijder and Royston Drenthe will pose another selection headache for Schuster. If the pair fail to recover come kick-off, the German-born coach will have to deploy Rafael van der Vaart, Javi Garcia and Guti just infront of Fernando Gago.